“I don’t want to be.”
“There may be trouble. I think I can promise it.”
“I didn’t come to Purissima with the idea of avoiding trouble. I didn’t come to get killed in an auto accident, either.”
The lights at the main-street intersection were flashing red. I braked to a hard stop. Rose Parish didn’t go with the mood I was in. “Get out.”
“I will not.”
“Stop asking questions then.” I turned east toward the hills.
“I will not. Is it something about Carl?”
“Yes. Now hold the thought.”
It was an early-to-bed town. There was practically no traffic. A few drunks drifted and argued on the pavement in front of the bars. Two night-blooming tarts or their mothers minced purposefully toward nothing in particular. A youth on a stepladder was removing the lettering from the shabby marquee of the Mexican movie house. AMOR was the only word that was left. He started to take that down.
In the upper reaches of the main street there was no one on foot at all. The only human being in sight was the attendant of an all-night gas station. I pulled in to the curb just below Grantland’s office. A light shone dimly inside, behind the glass bricks. I started to get out. Some kind of animal emerged from the shrubbery and crawled toward me onto the sidewalk.
It was a human kind of animal, a man on his hands and knees. His hands left a track of blood, black as oil drippings under my headlights. His arms gave away and he fell on his side. His face was the dirty gray of the pavement. Rica again.
Rose went to her knees beside him. She gathered his head and shoulders into her lap.
“Get him an ambulance. I think he’s cut his wrists.”
Rica struggled feebly in her arms. “Cut my wrists hell. You think I’m one of your psychos?”
His red hands struck at her. Blood daubed her face and smeared the front of her coat. She held him, talking softly in the voice she used for Martha: “Poor man, you hurt yourself. How did you hurt yourself?”
“There was wire in the window-glass. I shouldn’t have tried to bust it with my hands.”
“Why did you want to bust it?”
“I didn’t want to. He made me. He gave me a shot in the back office and said he’d be back in a minute. He never did come back. He turned the key on me.”
I squatted beside him. “Grantland locked you up?”
“Yeah, and the bastard’s going to pay for it.” Rica’s eyes swiveled toward me, heavy and occulted like ball bearings dusted with graphite. “I’m going to lock him up in San Quentin death row.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“He killed an old lady, see, and I’m a witness to it. I’ll stand up in any court and swear to it. You ought to’ve seen his office after he did it. It was a slaughterhouse, with that poor old lady lying there in the blood. And he’s a dirty butcher.”
“Hush now,” Rose said. “Be quiet now. Take it easy.”
“Don’t tell him that. Do you know who she was, Tom?”
“I found out. It was old lady Hallman. He beat her to death and tossed her in the drink. And I’m the one that’s gonna see him gassed for it.”
“What were you doing there?”
His face became inert. “I don’t remember.”
Rose gave me a look of pure hatred. “I forbid you to question him. He’s half out of his mind. God knows how much drug he’s had, or how much blood he’s lost.”
“I want his story now.”
“You can get it tomorrow.”
“He won’t be talking tomorrow. Tom, what were you doing in Grantland’s office that night?”
“Nothing. I was cruising. I needed a cap, so I just dropped by to see if I could con him out of one. I heard this shot, and then this dame came out. She was dripping blood.”
Tom peered at his own hands. His eyes rolled up and went blind. His head rolled loosely sideways.
I shouted in his ear: “What dame? Can you describe her?”
Rose cradled his head in her arms protectively. “We have to get him to a hospital. I believe he’s had a massive overdose. Do you want him to die?”
It was the last thing I wanted. I drove back to the all-night station and asked the attendant to call an ambulance.
He was a bright-looking boy in a leather windbreaker. “Where’s the accident?”
“Up the street. There’s an injured man on the sidewalk in front of Dr. Grantland’s office.”
“It isn’t Dr. Grantland?”
“No.”
“I just wondered. He came in a while ago. Buys his gas from us.”
The boy made the call and came out again. “They ought to be here pretty quick. Anything else I can do?”
“Did you say Dr. Grantland was here tonight?”
“Sure thing.” He looked at the watch on his wrist. “Not more than thirty minutes ago. Seemed to be in a hurry.”
“What did he stop for?”
“Gas. Cleaning gas, not the regular kind. He spilt something on his rug. Gravy, I think he said. It must’ve been a mess. He was real upset about it. The doc just got finished building himself a nice new house with wall-to-wall carpeting.”
“Let’s see, that’s on Seaview.”
“Yeah.” He pointed up the street toward the ridge. “It runs off the boulevard to the left. You’ll see his name on the mailbox if you want to talk to him. Was he involved in the accident?”
“Could be.”
Rose Parish was still on the sidewalk with Tom Rica in her arms. She looked up as I went by, but I didn’t stop. Rose threatened something in me which I wanted to keep intact at least a little longer. As long as it would take to make Grantland pay with everything he had.
30
HIS HOUSE stood on a terraced lot near the crest of the ridge. It was a fairly extensive layout for a bachelor, a modern redwood with wide expanses of glass and many lights inside, as though to demonstrate that its owner had nothing to hide. His Jaguar was in the slanting driveway.
I turned and stopped in the woven shadow of a pepper tree. Before I left my car, I took Maude’s gun out of the dash compartment. It was a .32 caliber automatic with a full clip and an extra shell in the chamber, ready to fire. I walked down Grantland’s driveway very quietly, with my hand in my heavy pocket.
The front door was slightly ajar. A rasping radio voice came from somewhere inside the house. I recognized the rhythmic monotonous clarity of police signals. Grantland had his radio tuned to the CHP dispatching station.
Under cover of the sound, I moved along the margin of the narrow light that fell across the doorstep. A man’s legs and feet, toes down, were visible through the opening. My heart skipped a beat when I saw them, another beat when one of the legs moved. I kicked the door wide open and went in.
Grantland was on his knees with a red-stained cloth in his hand. There were deeper stains in the carpet which he had been scrubbing.
He whirled like an animal attacked from the rear. The gun in my hand froze him in mid-action.
He opened his mouth wide as if he was going to scream at the top of his lungs. No sound came from him. He closed his mouth. The muscles dimpled along the line of his jaw. He said between his teeth: “Get out of here.”
I closed the door behind me. The hallway was full of the smell of gasoline. Beside a telephone table against the opposite wall, a gallon can stood open. Spots of undried gasoline ran the length of the hallway.
“Did she bleed a lot?” I said.
He got up slowly, watching the gun in my hand. I patted his flanks. He was unarmed. He backed against the wall and leaned there chin down, folding his arms across his chest, like a man on a cold night.
“Why did you kill her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s a little late for that gambit. Your girl’s dead. You’re a dead pigeon yourself. But they can always use good hospital orderlies in the pen. Maybe you’ll get some consideration if you talk.”